Like the Red Queen, the DMA in the AI age must run as fast as it can merely to remain in the same place.

Commission provides guidance to Google for AI interoperability on Android and sharing of Google Search data under the Digital Markets Act - EC, here.

Much tbd. Decisions not yet available, just a few thoughts for now.

The Article 6(7) specification proceeding may represent a transitional stage in DMA enforcement. The functional capabilities identified by the Commission—invocation, contextual awareness, the performance of actions and access to system resources—increasingly characterise the AI-assistant layer rather than the operating system as such. As AI assistants become the primary interface through which users access digital ecosystems, enforcement may therefore need to move from regulating operating-system interoperability to regulating AI assistants as core platform services in their own right.

Such a shift may already be possible under the existing DMA. Virtual assistants are expressly included among the categories of core platform services, and that concept could be interpreted functionally and in technologically neutral terms. This would be consistent with the General Court’s recent judgment in Apple, which rejected an understanding of a core platform service determined by the particular device or operating system through which it is provided, focusing instead on the common function performed by the service.

Should the Commission consider that interpretation legally uncertain, however, it should pursue the safer legislative route: initiating the procedures required to recognise generative and agentic AI assistants explicitly as a distinct category of core platform service. The DMA itself provides for investigations into new digital services and for periodic reconsideration of the existing CPS list, including through legislative proposals. Digital regulation cannot preserve its relevance by standing still. To borrow from the Red Queen, it must do all the running it can merely to remain in the same place; otherwise, the DMA risks becoming not the framework governing the emerging digital ecosystem, but an archaeological layer buried beneath it.